Traditional burners located on a cook top are typically spaced apart and are not designed to cooperate with one another to accommodate various shapes and designs of cooking implements. Each burner is normally capable of providing at least 4,000 BTU on a high setting, however, a wide range of burner heating capacities are available.
The flame orifices or ports of adjacent and non-concentric burners are usually spaced at least 6 inches, and more commonly 8 or 10 inches apart. This provides sufficient space so that the flames of the adjacent burners do not interfere with one another and so that pots placed on grates above each burner are not significantly heated by the other nearby burners. When it is desired to utilize adjacent burners for a very large pot or griddle, there may be a cold spot between the flame ports of the adjacent burners due to the substantial spacing. Some burners have previously been specially shaped in an ovular ring to heat griddles or long fish pans, for instance, such as those depicted in GB 2,292,453. However, such burners have a perimeter of flame ports that extends to such a length that the burners are unsuitable for cooking of smaller pots and therefore the griddle or fish burners tend to be for dedicated use, and require additional space on a conventional cook top.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,619 illustrates a cooperating burner system with multiple concentric gas rings. This patent illustrates an effective design for separately controlling inner and outer gas burners and has been utilized for Asian cooking in connection with wok-type kitchenware.
While the use of concentric rings of cooperating gas burners is known in the art, there is not believed to have been any effort to create a system for bridging the application of heat between non-concentric, non-adjacent burners. Specifically, there is not believed to be any prior art device or method for increasing the perimeter of flame to effect a bridge portion of flames between two independently operable burners.
Accordingly, a new burner assembly and method of utilizing burners is needed.